Wednesday, March 3, 2010

SAKKARA PONGAL

Sakkara Pongal!!!!! Very delicious and famous dish of Tamil Nadu. Celebration of pongal is over but I still prepare this, at least once in a month, for my princess because she loves it.Histroy shows, that Iyengars prepare the best sakkara pongal, since Akkarvadhsal and sakkar pongal is their traditional dish. Being an iyengar daughter in law, I got the chance to learn this in the first year of my wedding. All first year festivals, after wedding, are called as Thalai festivals and my Tahali pongal was in Chennai, in my in laws house. It is a tradition that, the pongal should be prepared by new vadhu (Daughter in Law) for the festival since I was new to the dish, my mother in law was just standing next to me, and guiding me what to do and only because of her guidance now I can prepare hundred of south Indian food. I made this again for my daughter and thought of sharing the Iyengar recipe with everyone. Try this recipe, I guarantee this will give you excellent taste of south Indian Iyengar Pongal.

SAKKARA PONGAL

Preparation time: 10 minutes (Approximately)

Cooking time: 45-50 minutes (Approximately)

Serve – 6 persons

INGREDIENTS

Whole Milk-11/2 litre

Rice-1cup (you can also use jeera rice (Dubraj) or Basmati)

Jaggery-2 cup

Ghee-1/2 cup

Broken Cashew nut-4-5 tabs

Raisine-4-5 tabs

Cardamom powder-1 tsp

Mace (Javitri) powder or Nutmeg (Jaifal)-a pinch

METHOD

• Wash rice and keep aside.

• Take a heavy bottom pan (I don’t have here so I used pressure cooker without its lid)

• Add milk in this and put it on high flame.

• Once milk comes to boil then reduce flame and add washed rice in this.

• Keep steering till rice gets cooked.

• Meanwhile heat another pan and put 1 cup water along with jaggery in this.

• Keep steering till jaggery gets melted.

• Once jaggery melted then filters it and keep aside.

• Now come to milk and rice. Once rice is cooked completely (it should beome like soft cotton when you touch it) then add jaggery water in this and keep steering.